Season 2, Episode 2: ‘Where the Stars are Strange’
The Halbrand heel-turn at the end of “The Rings of Power” Season 1 brought focus to a story that, to a degree, had lacked a clear antagonist. Yes, Galadriel had sensed Sauron was still alive; and yes, she had persuaded the Numenoreans to secure the Southlands against Adar’s orcs, as a bulwark against whatever Sauron might have in mind. But this big enemy, while having a name, still remained somewhat theoretical.
To quote “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” at times last season it was hard to hear Galadriel’s plans without asking: “Who versus? Who are we doing it versus?”
As Season 2 began, the existence of Sauron had been confirmed. But because he fled after helping forge the first three rings of power, at this point he remains — to our heroes at least — a chilling shadow, not a present threat. So this season’s second and third episodes, while revealing some of Sauron’s secret schemes, also returns to some of the minor villains and complications introduced in Season 1, showing how the elves, dwarfs and humans still have a lot of conflict to sort through, internal and external, before they can unite to vanquish their Big Bad.
Here are five takeaways and observations from Episode 2:
Those weird witches are back!
Remember how at the end of Season 1, the Stranger had to protect his harfoot friends from three mystics dressed in white who referred to him as “the Dark Lord?” This was a clever bit of misdirection from the “Rings of Power” writers, meant to keep the viewers from catching on too quickly that Halbrand was secretly Sauron. But the incident also helped the Stranger remember that he is actually of the Istari, an ancient order of wizards who in various forms have often intervened in the affairs of Middle-earth.
In this season’s second episode, those mystics return to their home base to report to the Dark Wizard (Ciaran Hinds) on their encounter with the Stranger. The sequence is one of the show’s most visually inventive to date, involving a woman bleeding onto the floor while surrounded by hundreds of butterflies — the form the mystics dissipated into after the Stranger violently attacked them — which flutter about and then reconstitute into a different woman.
It’s a moment way more elaborate than it needs to be (in a good way), given that this whole scene’s primary purpose is to introduce the Dark Wizard’s masked mortal soldiers, who announce their intention either to capture the Istari or to “slaughter the halflings he calls friends.”
The Stranger loses control again
We don’t have to wait long for the Dark Wizard’s minions to set upon the Stranger, Nori and Poppy. As the three travelers are pondering what the Stranger’s true name might be, they catch sight of the masked goons on their trail. They decide to cross a dangerous desert to dodge the enemies and save time. But as they are fading from dehydration, they come across a well in the middle of nowhere (next to a flag that bears the same logo the riders carry, which resembles what the Eye of Sauron will someday look like). The well also turns out to be a large bell, which rings and calls the horse-bound hunters to them.
This section of the episode starts out charmingly and ends in calamity. There’s such a nice rapport between the Stranger and the harfoots, exemplified by the little joke Nori tells when she returns from a foraging expedition, saying that all she found was a scorpion and a cactus. (Nori: “Scorpion stung me, I fell over, and well …” The Stranger, joining Nori for the punchline: “ … that’s how you found the cactus.”) Then, when the Stranger grabs a nearby staff with a crooked top, like something a wizard would wield, holding it seems to edge him closer to realizing his true self and his true power. It’s all very nice.
But alas, when forced once again to use his abilities to save Nori and Poppy, the sandstorm the Stranger whips up rages quickly out of control. He succeeds in stopping the masked horse-riders. But as his makeshift staff disintegrates in his hand, he also sends his halfling companions flying off into the sky.
Elrond changes his mind … sort of
With the elves’ rings now firmly on three fingers — and their realm restored — Gil-galad starts weighing the potential purposes for their new powers. The elves’ top priority is stopping Sauron, who might be in Mordor with Adar, meaning that if they move quickly they can “crush two spiders with one boot.” Or he might be headed to Eregion, intending to force Celebrimbor to make him his own ring. Galadriel (correctly) favors Eregion, but given that she has shown herself to be easily manipulated by Sauron, the king wants Elrond to weigh in.
Elrond is already on record as believing that his people should not be using the rings at all, lest they inadvertently become Sauron’s collaborators; and he also throws in an extra dig at Galadriel, blaming her persistent need to play the hero for her mistake of trying to help Halbrand become a king. But a later conversation with Cirdan about poetry softens Elrond’s objections. The shipwright argues that if a poet is a drunkard but the poetry is sublime, the work should stand alone. In other words, even if the forger of the rings is wicked, the well-meaning elves should still be trusted to wield them righteously.
Elrond seems to remain, at heart, unconvinced. But he does accept Gil-galad’s commission to lead an expedition to Eregion — to Galadriel’s shock, since she, as always, expected to be the leader.
Halbrand gets a rebrand
At the end of this season’s first episode, Sauron rode into Eregion as Halbrand, seeking an audience with Celebrimbor, who had not yet received a warning message from Gil-galad about Sauron. When the two finally do meet face-to-face in Episode 2, Sauron uses his powers of deception on the forger, lying that he has spoken to Galadriel and that he has seen the power of the rings firsthand. He also plays on Celebrimbor’s deep-rooted anxieties, planting in his head the idea that the elf aristocrats care only about the rings themselves, not the artisans who made them.
Sauron initially has a harder time convincing Celebrimbor to make more rings. Then he offers up another lie — or at least a half lie. He says that he is not Halbrand at all but rather is Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, sent from a realm beyond Middle-earth to help his friend become the Lord of the Rings.
This is all straight from the J.R.R. Tolkien lore: Sauron operating under the guise of Annatar, manipulating Celebrimbor and getting his all-important rings forged. But it’s exciting to see how it plays out here, building on the Season 1 relationship between Celebrimbor and Halbrand (a “Rings of Power” invention).
The dwarfs have lost the light
While making his case for more rings, Sauron answers Celebrimbor’s concerns about the dwarfs’ willingness to part with more mithril by saying that King Durin III (Peter Mullan) is coping with such a huge crisis in Khazad-dum that he will likely accept any helpful deal. That crisis? An earthquake has collapsed the underground kingdom’s light-shafts, cutting off the sun his people need to grow food. Even the kingdom’s “stone singers” — led by Disa (Sophia Nomvete), the wife of the king’s son, Durin IV (Owain Arthur) — can’t reestablish a connection with the mountain.
Of course, the real problem here is that the two Durins have been feuding ever since Durin IV helped the elves attain their initial supply of mithril. If a father and son can’t communicate, how can their entire race be expected to commune with their mountain home?
This dilemma cuts to the core of one of the problems the characters in this story face. Sure, Sauron is a danger to all of Middle-earth. But too often, the ones meant to stand against him are their own worst enemies.
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